Bryce recently posted this over on the listserve and I asked him if I could put it here too: POBRE ANA READING PLAN There is a lot that can be done with Pobre Ana. I have taught from the book for 11 years in HS, MS and college classes and it is still not old […]
Anne sent this with the comment: Oh my. Big fun here. I actually scripted this to go with one of Michael Miller’s short stories, but it’s worth doing all on its own. What A Handsome Boy! points at him what a handsome boy! looks like you may not go out with him Lyndsey and her parents
I took the “no blurting/talking over” rule out of my list of rules this year. I may need to add it back on there because I have one level 2 class that is just too chatty during stories. My recent thinking about the blurting issue has been that maybe if I slowed down more, there
I need to remember that my value as a teacher is not in how high my kids score on tests. It’s not really about how much they learn. Rather, it’s how they feel about themselves, about their ability to learn a language, upon leaving my classroom. Will I have helped them have confidence about themselves
Jim Tripp send me this excellent story and gave me permission to publish it here. It has everything except a plot, and shows how a lot of fun can be found in just the creation of images and not worrying so much about a problem with three locations (which most of us never get to anyway,
I’m republishing this old blog entry – slightly edited – from 2007. Amazingly, the core ideas in it remain applicable today: My stretching of the silly putty that is TPRS has taken many forms over the years, as I’m sure is true for all of us. I have tinkered and probed, laughed and gnashed my teeth,
One of my students has about 60 pairs of ears. That’s 60 on each side. Strangely, he is not as distracting as other students with just the one basic set of ears. Why? Because he listens so well. Isn’t that what we want? To be listened to because we know that input in aural form
Doug sent this update on how things have been unfolding this year. His new coaching group in Orange County is, in my opinion, an example of how we need to proceed. Obviously, coaching groups at the building level are not going to happen with most of us: Hey Ben, I’ve been avoiding taking in new information the past
Jim Baird send this: Hey Ben, I would like to tell you about one of my adult ESLstudents, 36 year old Juan Lopez. In 1995 Juan immigrated from rural Guatemala to California. Reportedly, his English speaking skills were zip. He went to work in a resin factory in Modesto, but stayed only a
I am about to embark, for the rest of the year, on using much more reading and songs to generate CI. I think that the focus on stories may have kept us from innovating more than we have into these two vital areas – vital because they are more interesting to teenagers who may not
Connected to the discussion on technology is its effect on classroom discipline. Doing the hard work of having to follow rules that demand that a child show up beyond the level of a robot in class is hard for kids with no experience in that area. A colleague recently heard the words “This is boring!” during
